Vitalik Buterin donates $765,000 in Ethereum to privacy messaging apps

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has donated approximately $765,000 in ETH to two privacy messaging apps, Session and SimpleX – two apps that aim to break past industry leaders Signal and Telegram.

Buterin has become an increasingly vocal advocate for privacy solutions in the crypto industry as global policies have increased fears of global surveillance states and irked those who want to keep their personal lives private.

“Encrypted messaging, like Signal, is critical to maintaining our digital privacy,” Buterin said tweeted. “Two important next steps for the space are (i) permissionless account creation and (ii) metadata privacy. Session and SimpleX are two messaging apps moving this direction forward.”

“Without privacy, how can you express your true self? If you can’t connect with others as your true self, you lose your ability to express yourself and live freely,” Chris McCabe, the co-founder of Session, told me. Declutter. “There is a war on privacy going on right now, but in reality it is a war on personal expression and individuality. Without privacy in this modern digital world you are left with censorship, over-control, corruption and tyrants.”

Session bills itself as a decentralized “end-to-end encrypted messenger” that aims for “minimal metadata leakage” – metadata is information surrounding a piece of content, such as an IP address or the time it was sent. It also has a token, SESH, which rose 371% on the day to a market cap of $15 million, according to CoinGecko.

SimpleX is also a decentralized end-to-end encrypted messenger, although its focus is on users owning their “identities, contacts, and communities.” Next year it will introduce “vouchers” that users must purchase and donate to communities, such as the Bitcoin community, to host the required servers.

“Neither are perfect pieces of software,” Buterin warned, adding that both “have a ways to go” to optimize user experience and security.

“Strong metadata privacy requires decentralization, decentralization is hard, users expecting multi-device support makes everything harder,” he continued. “Sybil/DoS resistance, both in the message routing network and on the user side (without forcing dependency on phone numbers) creates even more problems.”

Crypto and privacy

Interest in privacy-focused apps and crypto projects has surged in recent months as governments appear to be cracking down on the digital landscape.

“People increasingly live their lives in digital spaces. These spaces are vulnerable to a level of surveillance that has no equivalent in the physical world,” said Zac Williamson, co-founder of privacy-focused Ethereum Layer-2 network Aztec Network. Declutter. “Privacy is important so that individuals can act as free agents in their online interactions, unlike digital goods whose data is collected, sold to the highest bidder and weaponized against the user’s interests.”

Perhaps most notably, earlier this year the UK government began requiring its citizens to identify themselves if they want to access adult content online, and plans to introduce a digital identity scheme. Similarly, the Council of the European Union agreed Wednesday to allow messaging apps to scan content to protect children online in what skeptics have dubbed “Chat Control.”

Earlier this month, Buterin said that “privacy is hygiene,” following a security breach that affected several major US banks. In October, the Ethereum Foundation launched a new 28-member privacy team, with plans to expand its privacy-related projects and initiatives.

During this period, the number of privacy-focused crypto tokens has skyrocketed. ZcashFor example, according to CoinGecko, the price is up a staggering 793% over the past year to $501, despite a 27% drop in the past week.